Author Guidelines

Statement of Ethics

The Latin American Journal of Educational Studies is a peer-reviewed academic journal that is published on a quarterly basis in print and online. It adheres to international standards regarding academic procedures and management and is referenced in renowned national and international indexes.

The journal addresses educational researchers, professionals and scholars, as well as students and those interested in issues in educational fields: teachers, technical employees on education, social activists, and public policy decision-makers.

The journal is edited by and available free of charge in the web sites of the Universidad Iberoamericana Mexico City and of the Jesuit University System (SUJ). Likewise, it can be found in the indexes and electronic archives to which it belongs and may become part of, as the journal adheres to the global movement for open access relying on the BBB declarations: Budapest (BOAI, 2002), Berlin (2003), and Bethesda (2003).

The journal is free of any fees or charges for manuscript processing and/or publishing materials, or any other article processing charges (APC).

Continuing its longstanding tradition, the Journal joins the set of actions of the SUJ, which seeks “to contribute to the achievement of a freer, more solidary, just, inclusive, productive and peaceful society, through the development and dissemination of knowledge and the training of professionals and researchers of great human and intellectual quality, with competence at an international level, committed to the highest service to others, and inspired by authentically human, social and transcendent values.”

The journal will be, accordingly, an act of social accountability, which acknowledges that scientific research in the educational field culminates with the dissemination of the results of the processes or circumstances subjected to examination and, furthermore, will publish said results in any chosen academic genres. Thus, the Journal seeks to contribute to the national and international debate and provide knowledge for building a more just society.

The criteria leading the work of this journal are academic excellence, ethics in its review and dissemination, as well as efficacy and opportunity in its editorial processes.

Papers:

• The Journal will publish works in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English as they are the languages historically established in the continent and the basic languages for communicating with the rest of the world.
• Original and unpublished articles that have not been proposed to another journal in parallel may be accepted. These must contain results of educational research supported by a rigorous methodology–whether they have an empirical, theoretical or conceptual basis—which contribute in a significant manner, from any valid disciplinary approach, to achieving a better system of social justice, that link knowledge to educational policy, the right to education, educational inequality, and injustice in Latin America and the rest of the world.
• Papers focused on the systematization and reconstruction of experiences originating from popular education and Latin American social movements, as well as works on research results that prioritize the educational problems of socially and educationally marginalized groups.
• Papers that promote informed and constructive dialogue regarding the statistics of educational issues in the region.
• Critical reviews of books with an academic-scientific profile that have been refereed and recently published (maximum 3 years) that deal with educational topics. Those that refer to production visualizing the topics of interest to this journal will get priority: educational policy; studies carried out in Latin American contexts or that refer to the region; inequality, justice, and the right to education; counts and systematization of educational experiences. We will receive proposals within the framework of both the permanent and the thematic call for papers, when applicable.

In accordance with chapter III, second paragraph of the Universidad Iberoamericana’s (UIA) Publication Guidelines, any approved proposals which are demonstrated to being unoriginal or that have been sent to other publications will be rejected and their author(s) will be disqualified to present further proposals to the UIA.

The sections of the journal are:

• Editorial
• Enclave
• Latin America at a Glance
• Informed Dialogue
• Educational Policy
• Inequality, Justice, and the Right to Education
• Systematization and Reconstruction of Experiences
• Educational Horizon
• Essential Recount
• Interview
• What to Read

Manuscripts:

All manuscripts must be uploaded directly to the Contribution registration form, along with a statement of originality of the research, by which the authors admit and certify that they are responsible for their intellectual production in the whole and in its parts (photos, tables, images, drawings or graphics that form part of an article to illustrate its content), that they are the copyright holders and that the inclusion of the undersigned names does not conflict with the cited authors, or with the institution that sponsors the reported research, or with any other physical or legal entity. In case of any inconsistencies in this part of the submittal, the editors of the journal shall adhere to the Code of Conduct of the Committee on Publications Ethics (COPE).[1]

Once the manuscripts pass the peer review stage, the authors will receive a link for their registration as an UIA author, and for the assignment of any rights over their work. By these means, the author(s) transfer the intellectual property rights of their collaboration to the UIA, in case of being accepted for insertion, for a period of six years as of its publication date. Likewise, they transfer all copyrights related to reproduction in any material, electronic or virtual media, to Universidad Iberoamericana, with the purpose of disseminating this knowledge in any form. After the aforementioned deadline, the author may publish their work on any other medium, citing the source of its original publication in the Journal.

In case of containing testimonies or photographs of people, the author(s) must have the informed consent of the research subjects, in case the published material were to affect their physical or moral integrity, their personal data or raise a conflict of interest and there should be a need of requesting it. The author(s) must have the rights of use and reproduction of any photographs or graphics that are not of their property or authorship.

Structure:

The works must observe international regulations and good practice with regards to the basic structure of:

1. Original articles of empirical, academic and socially relevant research: concise title, which presents the actual content of the work, the authors, their institutional affiliation and e-mail; abstract in two or three languages, with a maximum length of 200 words and a minimum structure of: objective, methodology, results or academic or social relevance of the research; keywords in two or three languages, preferably based on the UNESCO Education Thesaurus, or in the IRESIE controlled vocabulary; introduction (the parts which comprise the article), objectives, methodology, results, conclusions, bibliographic references, and, where appropriate, recommendations or prospects for future inquiries.
2. Original articles on conceptual research and contributions to academic thought that exhaustively and critically organize published material on the subject, and that give an account of the state of any analysis on the matter in question, that identify any gaps, inconsistencies or theoretical and social relevance of contributions, or that anticipate possible forms of new solutions to problems.
3. Methodological contribution that presents new approaches, changes in existing methods or discussions on quantitative approaches and data analysis.
4. In the systematizations, gathering of experiences or case studies, the material collected during the described experience with people or organizations will be described and the usefulness and social relevance of the recovery will be highlighted.
5. Critical reviews that make visible the contributions of the referred work for the field of study in which it is inserted. It is highly recommended to give a title to the review different from that of the work referred to, and that reflects the personal position of the person who writes it about the work.

The papers must have a maximum extension of 25 pages and a minimum of 20 (1 800 characters, including spaces, per page), and in a Microsoft Office document (Word, Excel); as well as in the case of tables and graphs or figures, which must be sent in an editable format and not as images. In the case of any drawings or photographs, these must have a minimum resolution of 300 dots per inch (dpi).

In the case of the book reviews, the maximum extension will be 10 pages and a minimum of five. It must comply with the same format requirements as the rest of the manuscripts.

References:

The papers will refer to the literature that specifically serves to disseminate the results of the research in this journal and will abstain from including the overall bibliographical sources that gave rise to the research. In case we detect sources not referenced in the text, these will ve omitted from the final section.

Both citations and references within the text will adhere to the APA format in its 7^th edition. Be sure to strictly follow these guidelines in all types of publication or document, book, magazine, thesis, presentation, newspaper, WEB site, etc. Any manuscript that breaks this rule will not pass the first phase of the evaluation.

Please observe the editorial style rules of the UIA Publications Department in order to guarantee the literary quality of the work.

Peer Review:

The main criteria for the acceptance of proposals in the Journal are:

1. Relevance of the topic to the field of educational research, from any disciplinary, multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary approach.
2. Results of original academic research, and relevance and validity of its empirical, theoretical and conceptual models.
3. Systematization and reconstruction of original educational experiences that contribute to the field of popular education and broad social movements.
4. Papers whose contribution reinforces the interaction of knowledge with broad social phenomena, as well as those that have a potential influence of research towards any necessary social transformations, will receive priority to be included.
5. In all cases, the topicality and relevance of the sources of the research, as well as the high literary quality of the texts, will be positively valued.

Review Process:

• The papers will go through a four-stage review. The first stage will consist in verifying the absence of any repetitions, paraphrasing or plagiarism of other works through a specialized software. In case of not passing this stage, the papers will be rejected automatically.
• Technical review, which guarantees the academic quality of the manuscripts, and issuance of initial acceptance. In case of passing this stage, a Committee composed of two academic editors will verify the originality of the contributions, and the structural organization of the documents, the consistency of the empirical basis, where appropriate, as well as that of the theoretical and conceptual apparatus; likewise the validity of the sources on which the collaboration is based.
• If the paper passes this stage, the Editorial Committee will send the manuscript, in an anonymous form, to two or three arbitrators specialized in the subject or to a multidisciplinary council, who may approve the publication of the document, request minor changes or condition the publication to major changes. The Editorial Committee will indicate the deadline for receiving works with the included observations, up to three months after requesting such changes.
• The resolution on the book reviews will be ruled by the Editorial Committee and will be subject to the request of changes.

Reception and final acceptance dates will appear in a note on the front page of the published works. The author(s) will receive the final decision within four months from the date of initial acceptance of the document, or through the publication of their work. In case of rejection, the author(s) will be notified of the arguments for such rejection.

Pre-prints policies:

Any version of the collaboration proposed in the Journal must have the approval of the Editorial Committee to be published or cataloged in indexes and repositories by authors or third parties. It includes but is not limited to drafts, pre-prints, post-prints, ahead of print, online first, among others. It is compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 license and promotes good editorial practices that avoid duplication or ambiguity of publications.

Digital file preservation policy:

To guarantee the preservation and access to the digital contents of the Journal, we host them in the institution's servers, as well as in those of the repositories to which it belongs, such as Dialnet and Redalyc. Likewise, we make backup copies of the files, use metadata in a format compatible with digital preservation and interoperability, and DOI identifiers since 2016. The Journal is part of the Public Knowledge Projects Preservation Network (PKP-PN), whose objective is the preservation of digital files and whose scope and processes can be consulted at https://pkp.sfu.ca/pkp-pn/.

Interoperability protocols:

To facilitate and promote interoperability, the Journal uses OAI-PMH metadata protocols, in addition to offering first-hand its contents linked to Redalyc, which we mark with metadata in the XML-Jats system and which any interested party can harvest from it. Likewise, the Journal uses the interoperability services of OPEN-AIRE, whose scope and processes can be consulted at https://www.openaire.eu/.

Metadata policy:

The Journal uses the Dublin Core data schema, standardized under the highest standards, especially when the editorial team releases the final files. For interoperability purposes, we use OAI-PMH protocol.

The use and reuse of metadata align with the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 license to which the entire Journal adheres to.

[1] Which can be consulted at www.publicationethics.org